(Started being written sometime on Thursday the 22nd)
So this is the story of a sweet little bundle named Jocelyn. She is brand new and squishy. She has a double chin and long legs and fingers. She is still a stranger to me a bit, but yet she is also a part of me. In some ways, I am still a stranger to her too, but she does love to listen to my voice and stare at my eyes. She likes to be sung to, and she loves to suck. She is currently snoozing next to me, the sweetest little bundle. She came into the world like this…
After my “water breaking that wasn’t” incident, we left for the hospital for real on Wednesday morning, Sept. 21st around 5:30 am. The kids were still at Marcia’s from the night before, so we were just able to get up and get going. I say “get up,” but that probably isn’t the best term for it. I really had a hard time sleeping Tuesday night. I slept from about midnight to 1:30 and then again from about 3:45 to 4:45. That was about it. I read and prayed, caught up on birth stories on friend’s blogs, and tried to sleep. When it was time to leave, I will be honest that I was a little pessimistic about the whole idea of being induced. When Curt took a “getting in the car” picture of me that morning, I thought about immediately entitling it a “leaving for my failed induction” picture. I was in a joking and sarcastic mood about everything, but I definitely wasn’t optimistic. I even had Curt leave some of our bags in the car when we got to the hospital, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of carrying pillows and a suitcase back out to the van when it failed.
We got checked in, and actually had the same nurse from just a few hours prior. She had not been overly positive about me or my induction when we had left the night before, but she was slightly more upbeat this morning. (“You are only 1 cm and thick. If this were your first baby, I would tell you to prepare for a long day, but maybe, since its not, maybe it will go better....”) She checked me around 6:30 a.m. and still thought she felt a head, and that maybe it was slightly lower than it had been the night before. She also thought that I was maybe softer and slightly more dilated (1.5 instead of 1). She did say that maybe all the contractions from the night before had done something (which was definitely not the tune she was singing the last time we had talked). She went ahead and started the pitocin around 6:45 AM - 2.0 mL/hour - saying it would get turned up every 30 minutes until it did its job.
At shift change I got a new nurse, and what a welcome and positive change it was. Her name was Becki, and she was fabulous. She was just so stinkin positive. She was upbeat and cheerful, kind and thorough. She was one of my favorite parts of the day!
Chilling and having my pitocin turned up is pretty much how I spent my morning. I was having mildly painful contractions every 3 minutes or so by about 7:45. By 8:45, it was up to 10.0 mL/hour. Curt and I watched the first two episodes of Lost, I got up and sat on the birthing ball some, I had some juice, I made a successful trip to the bathroom, it was a fine morning. Becki, making me fall more in love with her, had commented that I was going to have the baby by 2:00. I responded with something about that sounding like wonderful but wishful thinking, as we still had no idea if I was progressing at all and I was still just hoping to not get sent home, to have the baby before dark, and to avoid nurse shift change. Around 9:00, Dr. Dadisman (the doctor who did my version) stopped in and asked if anyone had checked for a head with the ultrasound machine. They hadn’t, so she did. Sure enough, there was a nice head there in the right position. It did look like she was possibly looking sideways in the pelvis, but there was no comment made about this. We chatted for a few minutes, and she went on her way. I was extremely happy that she was the doctor on call. She is kind and confident, very personable and down to earth. If I had needed to see her again (instead of my midwife), I would have been fine with that.
Also around this time, the pain started increasing. The contractions were coming every minute or so, and they were getting much harder. It was still bearable, but I found myself increasingly curious to know if things were progressing or not. I didn’t want to be checked just to hear “no change” and to lower the positive mood of my lovely nurse, but I also really felt like things had to be moving somewhere. My midwife still had not stopped by, and I was getting more agitated about this. I asked Becki about it, thinking that the midwife’s presence related to my eventually getting drugs, and she said that pain management was up to me. When I wanted to ask about it, she would check me and get things started. I decided to wait awhile. It seemed that every time Becki visited my room, I was between a contraction. Since I was happy and smiling, and still able to talk and answer her questions, she didn’t think I was in much pain (and to her credit, I certainly wasn’t in much pain compared to what was to come). By about 10:00, the pain had moved lower, to my low pelvis and also my back. Also, I was starting to feel the contractions in my legs, shooting sharp pains down my outer thighs. I went to the bathroom again and decided that I was going to try and make it to 10:30 before asking about drugs. I only made it to about 10:15! Things were really picking up at this point, both in intensity and just tempo of the day. Curt called Becki for me, and found out that Nancy, my midwife for the day, was there and they were getting ready to come in and check me. Nancy checked, and I had progressed to 3 cm, 80% effaced, and -2 station. She did think the baby was probably face up or face sideways. She wasn’t ready to break my water yet, but Becki asked if they could start getting me hydrated for an epidural, and Nancy said of course. She mentioned that she would let the epidural kick in and then she would break my water. Becki got the IV fluids started and Nancy and Becki both stayed and talked for awhile about a variety of things - the new fall line up of shows, the new NCIS the night before (which Curt and I had gotten to watch since we had spent the night before at home instead of at the hospital!), the premiere of Biggest Loser, changes at the OB office, etc. It was kind of a random conversation, but I was thankful for the distraction from the intense pain I was in. The leg pain was unbelievably awful, and it was coming less than a minute apart.
After 11, the epidural lady showed up to start paperwork and prepwork. The actual delivering of the epidural did not go as well as last time. This is ironic, because one of the main things that stood out from the twins’ delivery was the funny way that the anestethsiologist just kept saying, “you have a beautiful back. such a beautiful back...” This time, the lady asked me if I had scoliosis, and she had to stick me multiple times before she was able to get it in. I’m not sure if childbirth and another pregnancy really has changed my back that much, or if I was just in so much pain that I wasn’t sitting correctly on the lumpy bed. I jerked away on the first stab, but she eventually got the epidural in and started sometime after 11:30. It took a little longer for its effects to kick in than I remember, but they eventually did. I was able to move both legs this time (last time one leg lost all usefulness).
Because the contractions were coming so rapidly, they turned the pitocin down to 6.0. At noon (only an hour and a half since my last check), Becki checked me and I was 8 cm and 100% effaced. No wonder things had gotten so crazy. My water was still intact and the baby was still at -2 station. I was able to relax in bed, laying on first my right side and then my left (I think this was an attempt to hopefully get the baby to rotate in my pelvis now that I was relaxed), and around 12:30, I announced, “yup, my water just broke,” and this time I wasn’t making it up. Becki got my bed cleaned up, called for Nancy, and started things in motion for delivery. It was surreal to see carts being brought into the room, the warmer turned on, baby nurses popping in, etc. The epidural and my hormone surges were giving me the shakes at this point. At Nancy’s next check, she thought the baby had possibly rotated out of sunny side up, and that there was only the slightest rim of cervix left.
I guess I fully dilated sometime shortly after that; Nancy had said that just a few more contractions would do it, and at 12:55, I started pushing, with pitocin completely turned off and unhooked shortly after that. Nancy seemed pleased with my pushing, but the baby wasn’t really descending, so after a few rounds of pushing, she suggested that we just watch a couple of contractions and see what happened. We watched some contractions on the monitor (thanks to the glory of my epidural), and even though I wasn’t pushing, some really great things happened in these few minutes. One, the baby descended, on her own, much further down into the birth canal. Also, I was able to really start to feel the pressure and the contraction waves that I wasn’t feeling before. I wasn’t in intense pain, but I could definitely feel the pressure rising. I started pushing again after that. I remember Becki calling for a baby nurse asking her if she wanted to attend a “birthday party in room # such and such.” They started being able to see the head sometime after that. It really seemed to everyone that she was completely bald. (I did feel the head at some point in time also.) Again, one of my favorite parts of this delivery was seeing the extreme excitement on Curt’s face as the pushes got more productive and he could really tell that she was close. That was so encouraging to me last time to just keep pushing, and it was this time as well. (I get a little self-conscious and awkward feeling during pushing.) After a few more pushes, at 1:33 pm, Jocelyn Raeanne Sharbaugh came into the world, screaming and face up. The first thing I heard from both Nancy and Becki was, “oh you little stinker.” What we had been thinking was a bald head, was actually her poor forehead. She had successfully come out, head down, but face/forehead up. She was immediately passed up to my stomach to meet while the nurse wiped her off. Curt cut the cord, and I spent some time staring at and starting to get to know my little girl (and trying to come up with something else to say to her besides “hi” and “shhhhh”).
Stay tuned for Part 2...
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